5 Secrets To Creating Great Adsense Sites
Here's how you can keep up the momentum of AdSense earnings.
The rage to milk money from Adsense continues into 2011. While there are many different ways to do this, it's no secret Google is keeping a watchful eye on spam sites which automatically generate pages consistently on a daily basis.
Every now and then, Adsense 'experts' would introduce a 'fresh' new way of generating pages which Google "has not caught on yet", be it article, directory or backlink generators.
While these software are very good at what they do, you can't solely depend on them for long-term success. It's a natural tendency that automatically generated content just doesn't look like quality pages with highly informative, up-to-date content, but it's my personal observation.
Most run-of-the-mill, ads-on-topfold Adsense sites lack substantial sections and deeper structures to be interesting enough to make visitors think they should come back to check them out more often. While generating as many pages as possible is crucial to get them indexed and thereby build substantial presence in search results, these types of pages should only complement principal content that reflects what your site stands for and the selling point it serves to maximize its overall value. There used to be a question that goes, "Is building Adsense sites a business?" My answer is: Adsense is secondary.
Of course, like you I do want Adsense to be my primary source of income. The secret is in emphasizing content and value, not Adsense ads. You may have felt resigned to say, "Does that mean more work?" Not really. Here's another secret inspired by a quote from Albert Einstein: You can't solve your Adsense income challenge at the same level of thinking.
Truth is: I have build a good number of Adsense sites, but my main Internet Marketing site which I treat as my core business earns more than some of them despite my intention not to make it Adsense-focused, all the more so when it has absolutely nothing to do with high-paying keywords and the tremendous amount of time that goes into keyword research...which leads to the next secret: create a site with a subject or niche you know you can continually express and expand on instead of getting stuck with a 'lucrative' keyword you may run out of ideas on in the long term.
This is as good as saying Adsense is not just a keyword value game; it is still the classic "How do I get and retain traffic" game, and traffic is not some scoreline, but real people with genuine interest.
eHow.com is an incredible example. It's a free site that shows people how to do a lot of different things. The best way to explain the site is just for you to go have a quick look now. They have hundreds, possibly thousands of pages of content on all sorts of subjects and the way they get traffic to their site is through the search engines.
Every page on the site has an Adsense box on it and that's how it makes money. They also have a Alexa traffic ranking of around 2000 which is great.
Of course, it doesn't make sense to write or purchase that much content by yourself. eHow.com succeeds in getting its visitors involved in content contribution. There's also a wikiHow to get contributors involved in constant update of a common topic or article.
For a start, here are suggestions on the type of sections you can integrate into a site:
1) Lead capture page with freebies or incentives.
2) Article directory.
3) A 'Contact Us' page.
4) An 'About Us' page.
5) Forum: The challenge lies in the time and effort needed to build up momentum to encourage forum participants to write in.
6) An archive section of some kind, for selected articles for example.
7) Blog/podcast pages.
8) Reciprocal link directory.
9) Sitemap.
It doesn't take much to think of these standard sections. Even a products section makes your site look good besides providing another source of income, and then you replicate these sections site after site, niche after niche.
4th secret: Only sites with a general theme can afford to be massive-looking. Examples: Entrepreneur.com and Dogomania.com. Then you break the theme down into specifics like gathering them under an umbrella: dog training, dog hygiene, dog naming, dog psychology, doggy habits etc. Accurate targeting of Adsense ads depends on specific subjects as reflected on page. One thing to note is it is better that specific sections are inter-linked in some ways. If you run a site on everything about cancer, because "colon cancer" and "breast cancer" are not intrinsically related, visitors interested in one section may not want to take a first glance at another.
5th secret about content: write from a 'consumer' perspective instead of the 'opportunist' or "how to make money" perspective. What is it your visitors are looking to buy? Ads normally target and appeal directly to consumers. It's pointless to put up content about how to make money with car accessories when there are hardly ads on "how to make money". Stick to introducing car accessories and let the ads do the selling. If an accessory or equipment catch visitors' attention and they click on the ads, you got Adsense dollars.
That's about all the ideas I have at this moment. You should be confident now and maybe have some more new ideas I haven't thought of. For sure, Adsense is a major income source you should seriously explore and make it big if you haven't done so. This is one of those money machines that will make you money-on-demand pretty much for the life of Google.